Every post-college get together was the exact same, no matter its nature. At some point in the night we’d all flock outside in support of Sticks as he stood atop the roof’s ledge in crucified pose patiently waiting for divine inspiration to strike from the cold, blue beyond. Luckily, on this occasion, it came within the hour in the form of a slurred yell which confirmed that “I am Jesus Christ reincarnate!”

He was every time shirtless. Wanted to be. Even in the dead artic soul of such a wicked Dublin Winter that man’s nipples always sought to bathe in sharp nighttime breeze. This was his routine repeated. Vanishing hair standing tussled and nascent beer belly shining beer-soaked beneath the moon’s white light. Strangled beer bottle in one hand, joint nub in the other. The curly black hairs of his bruised chest all smudged down flat against his front like oil-slicked feathers. Maybe a prop or two by his feet, just in case of emergency. This was Sticks in his newfound element. Modern. Cool.

The Jesus Christ thing was relatively new though.

For the last while Sticks had begun to change his identity from month to month. Now free from institutional existence and in-between two lives, the relatively jobless strategic management under-graduate devoted his entirely empty days to designing and assuming new names, announcing them halfway through the first dinner party of the month with a grand fuck-my-fucking-life sort of flare.

Since graduation back in late August we had started to gather for regular meals, our close gaggle of heads, lost souls teetering on the edges of adulthood, desperately seeking solace in some homemade risotto, mouldy cheese, and the mutual terror of life unknown beyond the safety of our bedrooms.

Sticks was a core part of this tradition. In fact, he was its founding member — or whatever it is you call the person who lies at the heart of a social group. For it was him who had befriended everyone individually before bringing us all together, now family. But you wouldn’t really know this unless you’d done the social accounting. And by that I mean meticulously tracing back every relationship to its common ancestor, its social source. Most people just didn’t bother, didn’t think of it, but I did. I liked to know who to thank for the curation of the people I loved. And no doubt this was Sticks.

We grew to love the huddle. The same semi-circle cupped to mimic the waning edges of the rock above. Another eagerly awaited routine, some semblance of structure. Like the side of a bed or the seat at a dinner table the semi-circle became a core part of our consciousness. It simulated purpose. A primal sense of belonging took root in all of us as we marched into those damp back gardens and arranged ourselves into preferred spots under the moss-filled gutters and slanted rooftops, eager to watch our old, beloved fool proclaim yet another absurd persona out across the Dublin vagueness.

So far we had gazed up at such impressive entities as: The Ghost of John Lennon, Leon Trotsky, Death Itself, Lord of the Flaccid Penises, A Nine to Five Job, and on one particularly stoned night, a character whose name only resembled a slow, groaning, ape-like chant.

I loved them all. In truth, I yearned for the guts to try one on for myself. Because I didn’t really like who I’d become in the last few months. Anxious. Afraid. Aware. It was a version of my mature self whom I’d always envisioned to be stronger when I was younger. But I’d grown to be weak, passive, in constant pain, the majority of which had evolved to emanate from my own body and mind and without seen source, leaving me always exhausted. I needed to become someone else. Just for a little while. But I’d never been any good at wrapping myself in a positive fiction if the fiction made no fucking sense. Not like Sticks.

Hands down my favourite character so far was Jesus Christ. There was just something so profoundly thrilling in Sticks’ proclamation of the identity, standing there in that slanted T-pose claiming to be the son of God. It’s hard to explain why. It’s like it just instantly struck this deeply buried biological chord within me, summoning up these sprawling patches of turgid goosebumps all over my neck, back and forearms and around my thighs. It sent shivers into my toenails. It just invaded me entirely.

I think part of the identity’s power had something do with the way Stick’s said it. His voice had this fresh palpable sincerity that hadn’t been there for the previous identities. Each word nailed itself to a wave of newfound intensified honesty that issued out of every naked crevasse Sticks had to bare. And it wasn’t just me who was melting from these effects. I noticed how it softly lifted the woe of the semi-circle around me, for sure sparking a divine energy in others too. I could hear it, a vivid might begin to breed in the air around us. The fine hum of twenty-something year old beings brushing up against a lost childhood sense of Friday afternoon transcendence. Here, we were all plumules of the same seed seeking sunlight, starving for photons, shifting our weight into the souls of our feet and ascending as a unit, crying out things like: “Yes! There he is! He is what he says he is! He is!”

It was a form of tipsy testifying. Dumb, drunk passionate disciples all overjoyed to finally receive the good word from up on high. One by one hands floated weightless into the sky, all holding log-sized joints and terribly rolled smokes, their tips alit with fresh flames to banish the darkness from the path ahead. One glass of red wine traveled from lip to lip, gullet to gullet, and soon thereafter we were all speaking in tongues as our bodies seized sideways with these clonic bursts of energised belief. Sticks noticed this and began to break the stale crusts of a leftover oven pizza, handing them down to fuel the situation further and cement his role as pint-guzzling prophet.

Sticks was starting a movement here. Revolution against the next way of life. No questions, only answers, only declarations of unwavering faith. It was such a massive choke-on-these-nuts to any and every good thing that had been stripped from our lives in the last few months and it was gay, and it was blissful, and it was all too brief.

Come Christmas things began to change. Evil questions crept back in. Hopelessness marked by an exodus of loved ones plagued the minds of non-believers. Beloved heads began moving to places so distant you needed a bank loan just to hug them again. Local life became a sinking ship most were either abandoning or planning to abandon in the near future. Everyone except Sticks of course. He wasn’t even reacting. He was dead set on going down with the ship. In a way, I guess he was the ship.

He’d taken to kissing the emigrates on the cheek and calling them heretics, blasphemers and other cruel words of ancient ilk. He upturned tables and cast us out of his Dad’s home one night after yet another soul announced their plans to leave him. I think he either felt too much pride to take any similar backward action for the sake of his own future, or he was just too afraid. And he wasn’t the only one. There was, after all, a few of us who stayed.

It was on the eve of our final dinner that I saw an entirely different side to Sticks. Our once large-ish gaggle now whittled down to a handful of frowning faces. The aimless idiots. It was officially the end to whatever this was, had been, this phase, this freedom. And I could tell it hit Sticks hard.

He sat alone in the corner for the entire night listening to nearby conversations with half-nodding head. Said nothing. Offered nothing. Added onto nothing. I watched him from across the room with a basic enough four-letter question bit between my teeth.

R U O K?

But I couldn’t come to ask it. Probably because I knew his profoundly sad answer and had no follow up. Nothing to offer. Not even a back pat. I needed more alcohol, or the right moment — Both of which came half an hour later when I exited the bathroom and found Sticks blocking the door, almost buffering like a laptop, his eyes blurry with retained tears.

“What age did this all start?” He said. “When did we turn from these drunk kids running around a free house into such civilised adults seated around a dining room table? We’ve got all the necessaries for a raging party here and yet we choose to be boring, talk about things that have nothing to do with us, monitor our intake, never flirt, prioritise politeness, protect the next morning like it’s some kind of wounded animal. How is it we all achieved this empty sense of maturity at the exact same time? These get togethers, every invitation only stirs up a searing dread within me now. I just can’t shake this bad taste of an endless counting down to my own and everyone I love’s eventual death.”

“Jesus.” I said.

“A glass of white wine and a cold beer in a friend’s kitchen, it doesn’t exist anymore. It’s always gotta be a goodbye to a loved one disguised as some run-of-the-mill, civilised party. And no one ever dares call it sad. It always has to be honoured with a smile and a card. But why? Why can’t we be honest? Reminds me of funerals. Like why must this be a celebration of life? Why must jokes be told over the corpse? Why must it wear a suit and tie? You’re telling me there’s a dress code for the dead? Even the dead can’t be dead. Nothing can be what it is anymore if it’s sad. It has to be fuel of some kind. Something to start a business, learn a lesson, improve a body, define a personality. It’s gotta be upturned on its head, repressed into a dream and then farted out into some perfectly orchestrated and prosperous future. But I know the real truth: endings are nothing but sad.”

It was rehearsed. It was refined. It had rhythm. It rhymed. It used metaphor and simile to make good points backed up with specific examples. I couldn’t add to it. I didn’t dare try. All I could do was stand there with my wet hands and undone belt and watch this shell of a nice dude I was once knew quietly shuffle upstairs towards the roof.

Outside, a scattered few. No more semicircle. Just a sparse constellation of unblinking eyes beneath a cloudless abyss. Then he appeared. Humble. Stoic. Sober. Hair combed. Shirt on and tucked in. No more grand entrance. No more flare. No more waiting for divine inspiration. This idea was human.

“She was a dear friend of mine,” Sticks announced. “I loved her and she left. I loved her, and then she just left.”

This was the last identity. The final character. One that seemed to have been with him always. This was a blurred smudge suspended in air, a relaxed figure falling through the navy nighttime. This was certainly not The Ghost of John Lennon, Death Itself, Lord of the Flaccid Penises, A Nine to Five Job, An Ape-like Chant, or Jesus Christ Reincarnate. This was another species entirely and it was frantically flapping its arms up and down as it slipped away from the stars and smashed face-first through the glass table below. Nothing left to be believed except the man left behind. Peter Sticks.

“He was what he said he was.” I whispered.“He was.”